Mining Software Evolution to Predict Refactoring

Can we predict locations of future refactoring based on the development history? In an empirical study of open source projects we found that attributes of software evolution data can be used to predict the need for refactoring in the following two months of development. Information systems utilized in software projects provide a broad range of data for decision support. Versioning systems log each activity during the development, which we use to extract data mining features such as growth measures, relationships between classes, the number of authors working on a particular piece of code, etc. We use this information as input into classification algorithms to create prediction models for future refactoring activities. Different state-of-the-art classifiers are investigated such as decision trees, logistic model trees, propositional rule learners, and nearest neighbor algorithms. With both high precision and high recall we can assess the refactoring proneness of object-oriented syste...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: ESEM
• Authors: Jacek Ratzinger, Thomas Sigmund, Peter Vorburger, Harald Gall
• Keywords: ESEM 2007, Future Refactoring, Future Refactoring Activities, Refactoring, Software Engineering